My column in today’s Greenville News.

https://www.greenvilleonline.com/story/opinion/contributors/2017/01/27/commentary-hollywood-sanitizing-human-experience-reality-challenged-culture/97136066/

I love a good action movie. I tend to prefer the Marvel franchise over DC. I think Superman is too perfect and Batman just too moody. I mean, which rich guy would you rather party with? Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark? Exactly.
But I have always been amazed at the amount of destruction wrought by my beloved X-men and Avengers when battling monsters, aliens, gods and other ne’er do wells. Buildings and freeways and bridges destroyed, untold cars exploding, earthquakes and giant holes in the ground. It’s apocalyptic! In fact, if that were really happening, the toll of human dead would be staggering. Tony Stark could probably make a fortune selling coffins, and ER docs like me would be overwhelmed.
Movies like that are obviously meant to be outlandish; and to take your hard-earned vacation money. But I fear that television and movies sanitize too much of our bitter human experience, making misery somehow palatable.
Take regular action films for instance. Whatever the underlying story, it seems that gun-fights are everywhere! Bullets fly in all directions. Then, at the end of it all, bystanders aren’t injured. Nobody lies moaning or screaming for help. We don’t see the pools of blood spreading across the ground, the skin becoming more clammy, more pale as police call for an ambulance, as the paramedics or surgeons try frantically to stop the flow. We don’t see, or hear, the family member of the dead when they’re told what happened. I’ve done that a bunch and it’s something you never, ever forget. Scenes like that don’t make for fun entertainment.
In our movies nobody sees survivors, good and bad, condemned to paralysis, or with colostomies or amputations from those exciting gun-fights. What about characters punched and kicked to a pulp, their faces bloodied until they can’t breathe? They get chronic headaches, brain damage, vision problems, inability to chew or smell. I have seen them die too.
But we’re oblivious to more than real violence. When we watch trials and cheer for justice, when we want this or that person to go to prison for their crime, we sometimes forget that the imprisoned don’t see their families much, and their families miss them for years, or for life. And let’s not forget that prison, real prison, is a place where violence, rape and drug addiction are far too common.
I hate it when someone says, ‘guess he’ll get it good in prison; I hope he enjoys his cell-mate,’ or some other bit of cruelty. It’s never OK to wish for someone to be raped, male or female. Ever. Although prison has a necessary role, maybe we need to revisit the boundary between punishment and torture. We should want better for even the worst; especially if we call ourselves Christian.
There are others disconnects, of course. When characters in movies have multiple sexual partners, it looks like nothing but fun to modern, sexually liberated viewers. But we seldom see the misery of loneliness that comes from all of those connections, made and broken. Films and television do a poor job of showing us the pain and terror of HIV or hepatitis, the anxiety of unplanned pregnancy and the reality of abortion. They fail to reveal the suffering brought by cervical cancer associated with HPV. The don’t show the tears shed over infertility caused by chlamydia or gonorrhea infections; the danger to newborns caused by herpes. It’s also hard to fathom the fact that many who work in pornography are miserable in heart, mind and body, and some around the world are compelled to do it against their will, working as sex slaves.
On screen, getting drunk is just what you do. We have all laughed at intoxicated characters, for as long as actors have played them. But we seldom consider the mortality and disability from car crashes. We rarely think about the way men and women die from head injuries or asphyxiation due to alcohol or drug abuse. We don’t get to witness the abuse and neglect of children, the cruelty to spouses, the lost hope, lost productivity and broken families from both.
We have to remember that what we see in movies and television is seldom the whole story. Sometimes, the truth is better. And sometimes, unfortunately, the reality is a lot worse, and far darker than the screenwriter, producer or director can ever, or would ever, convey to our entertainment soaked, reality challenged culture.

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